The Sacrifice of Isaac
Andrea Del Sarto, The Sacrifice of Isaac, 1527
Lamia Priestley February 13, 2024
This is a painting about a father attempting to kill his son.
It’s also a painting about faith.
In Andrea del Sarto’s The Sacrifice of Isaac (1527), Abraham is instructed by God to kill his only son, Isaac. But as Abraham brings down his knife, an angel of the Lord appears and calls out from heaven: “Do not lay a hand on that boy…do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” (Genesis 22:15) Abraham looks up and a ram appears—a sacrifice provided by God in Isaac’s place.
A rational interpretation of the Biblical tale would condemn Abraham as a murderer. Instead, the father of the world’s three major religions is considered the face of unwavering faith.
It's unbelievable, it’s horrifying, it’s beyond all reason. Kiergegaard expresses his outrage at Abraham’s characterisation in his book, Fear and Trembling (1843) when he writes,“there were countless generations that knew the story of Abraham by heart word for word. How many did it make sleepless?”
In other words, how can we believe in, much less love, a God who would ask such a thing of Abraham? And how can we look to an Abraham who would do such a thing to his son?
A close-looking at The Sacrifice of Isaac with Kierkegaard’s question in mind reveals something of the painting’s ambition. The work shows us the power of visual experience in bringing us to a place, Kiekergaard describes as, where “thinking leaves off.” A place where we can not only interpret, but identify with Abraham’s actions, not as murder, but as the ultimate act of faith. Only then, can the visual experience of Abraham’s story, the experience of its material representation—its colour, texture, brush stroke, composition—become a personal experience of faith for the viewer.
Look first at Del Sarto’s treatment of light—the areas of canvas that soak it up or are wholly drained of it. The soft washed curls of the hills; the inky dark depths from which the ram emerges; and the pearly luminescence of Isaac’s flesh have a dreamy, other-worldly quality. Distinct from naturalistic representations of light and darkness, this light, its character, is separate from the physical world of the painting. There’s either too much or too little of it across the canvas, as if, unbound by the laws of nature, the light gets to choose what and how to illuminate. Art historian Steven J. Cody describes this kind of painted light, which took Del Sarto many years to develop, as “the fire that totally inflames and carries us into God by ecstatic unctions and burning affections. This fire is God.”
In their thin application to the canvas, Del Sarto’s brushstrokes are left visible, exposed. This creates a loose patchwork of textures that allow the painting’s ground to show through, giving off a kind of ethereal glow. The surface’s unusual texture and Del Sarto’s rhythmic handling of paint have the effect of entrancing the viewer, drawing her into the painting’s abstraction, into its very painted-ness. Arrested by the overwhelming redness of Abraham’s shirt, the flecks of paint that make up the tufts of his beard, the delicate transparency of his shin cast in shadow, the viewer can no longer read the image before her literally, but absorbs the scene in its totality on a deeper, visceral level. The depiction of the figures, their actions, and the story at large become secondary to the viewer’s experience of the materiality of the painting. In this way she is moved beyond the Biblical story, beyond the painting’s content.
The Sacrifice of Isaac was completed in Florence in the early 16th century amidst a rising demand for reform in the Catholic Church. Much like their northern counterparts, Italian reformists criticised the Church’s elaborate, institutionalised rituals for offering impersonal, grandiose routes to God. They argued, instead, for a return to a stripped back, “pure faith”, a faith based in a personal, intimate relationship with God. Such a relationship might be cultivated through the experience of reading scripture or contemplating God through works of art. To the reformers, “pure faith” came from acts that allowed “one’s conscience to be addressed by God.”
Del Sarto’s painting is a direct address to the viewer’s conscience. It moves the viewer to an experience of Abraham’s faith and by extension her own, not through a retelling, but through a visual and material evocation of the divine.
¹ Andrea del Sarto: Splendor and Renewal in the Renaissance altarpiece
Lamia Priestley is an art historian, writer and researcher working at the intersection of art, fashion and technology. With a background in Italian Renaissance Art, Lamia is currently the Artist Liaison at the digital fashion house DRAUP, where she works with artists to produce generative digital collections.
